


What the River Carries

by dearfriendicanfly



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Quest of the Ring, Trauma, and also i wish the movies showed merry and frodo's friendship more, i just..... care merry and pippin a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29373045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearfriendicanfly/pseuds/dearfriendicanfly
Summary: "I was just thinking that you aren't talking much.""...I'm talking to you now, aren't I?""You are," Pippin admits. "But... you're not really saying anything, if you understand what I mean."The quest is over, and Merry is home, standing a whole foot taller than when he left. But with Frodo gone and Pippin coming of age, Merry isn't sure how he fits into anything anymore.
Relationships: Frodo Baggins & Merry Brandybuck, Merry Brandybuck & Pippin Took
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	What the River Carries

The day that Frodo left Buckland to live with Bilbo, Merry refused to see him off. He ran to the Brandywine river instead, angry and ashamed. If Frodo wanted to be rid of him so badly, then the sooner the better. Little Merry would never speak to him again. _That_ would show him.

But the longer he sat there by the river, the duller his anger became, until it was a soft ache deep in the pit of his chest. For hours, he listened to the Brandywine's sweet song, and watched it glitter in the golden hour, throwing up sparks of sunlight like firecrackers, until dusk painted the sky and the river in softer colors that soothed his heart. The water flowed on past him, quick and cool and inexorable. 

And then he walked back home, feeling better and yet heavier, blinking back tears at the thought of having missed his chance to say goodbye. But Frodo was waiting for him on the doorstep. He sat patiently with all his bags and boxes piled around him, and smiled with relief when he saw Merry coming down the road.

"Hullo, Merry," Frodo said gently, pushing some of his bags to the side to make room for his little cousin to sit beside him. Merry did so reluctantly, his sweet face screwed up in fear and shame. But Frodo wrapped a kind arm around him and kissed his curly head, and that was enough to make little Merry cry again.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed, and every sob was earth-shattering, because Merry was just seven years old, and this was his first true heartbreak. 

And Frodo only smiled sadly and held him, because he was twenty-one, and had already had enough heartbreak to last a lifetime. "It's all right," he assured the boy. "I was never going to leave without saying goodbye to _you,_ Merry."

"I don't want to say goodbye..." Merry buried his face in Frodo's shirt, clinging to him, and he felt Frodo's chest rise and fall with a heavy sigh.

"Neither do I," he admitted softly. "I will miss you terribly, Merry lad. Which is why you have to come and visit me often as you can! I'll be too lonely without you."

Merry's eyes widened then, and an odd courage stirred in his heart, displacing the sorrow just a little. "I will!" he cried, wiping his face on his sleeve. "I will! Whenever you need me, Frodo!"

Frodo's eyes were warm and misty as he planted another kiss on Merry's head. "My little hero... But I shall come running whenever you need me, too, Merry. Just say the word. I'll swim across the Brandywine if I must!"

Now, Merry is forty. His heart has been broken and reassembled so many times that he hardly knows its shape. And the river flows ever ever on, bearing its burdens to a body of water far more vast and terrible. Frodo is somewhere on the other side of the sea, and that is the end of it.

Sprawled upon the riverbank, Merry watches the water rush past. The Brandywine babbles and sings and glitters, but louder and brighter is Merry's memory of the sea, and the slow shrinking of ships on the horizon until they sank below it with a suddenness that still makes Merry's heart plummet. He dips his right hand into the river, letting the cool water rush between his fingers. For a while, it soothes him. But it isn't long before it starts to feel sinister, like a gentle tug, coaxing him to come in deeper and be swept away.

_To the sea,_ says a voice in the back of his mind, and he quickly withdraws his hand. It feels cold and stiff.

As the sun begins to set, Merry turns away from the water to face the long road home. He tends to take the scenic route these days, going far out of his way to avoid passing through town. He isn't trying to avoid _people,_ he tells himself. He just needs some peace and quiet from time to time. Or... all the time. But after almost two years of nonstop celebrating and rebuilding and retelling since he came home, he figures he's entitled to as much time alone as he wants now. So he walks far along the riverbank, through the long, creeping fingers of the Old Forest, and around the back of the Hall where no nosy relatives might catch him. But to his surprise, as he comes down the road, he sees a figure sitting crouched at the doorstep.

For a moment, his breath hitches in his chest. But when the figure spots him, they jump up with a wave and a cry, and Merry recognizes Pippin's voice shouting, "Hullo! Took you long enough!"

Merry doesn't bother hurrying down the road, partly because he sees no reason why he shouldn't take as much time as he pleases, but mostly because he knows it will annoy Pippin. But when he comes up to the doorstep, he smiles bemusedly at the sight of his cousin with a bag slung over his shoulder and a wide-brimmed straw hat flopping about his head. "Well," Merry says, "if I'd _known_ you were coming, I would have been quicker coming back."

Pippin laughs and shakes his head, pulling back the brim of his hat. He's thirty-two now, just a few months away from coming of age. But there's hardly anything to distinguish him from the young, freckly tween who set out from the Shire almost four years ago, aside from a few new lines of care that even the soft light of sunset cannot smooth away. "Nonsense," Pippin chuckles, "you would have run for the hills! It seems that the only way I can get ahold of you lately is through ambush, cousin. Luckily for me, the Hall is always ready for guests, so you can't escape me easily!"

He says it jokingly, but something around the corners of his smile goes a little crooked. Merry laughs, too, but he can't help a pang of shame in the pit of his stomach. "Well, you've got me in your clutches now, Pip. What would you do with me?"

"Ask you for a bite of supper!" Pippin cries, taking Merry's arm. "I'm starved."

After hot food and an even hotter bath, Pippin seems livelier than ever. He talks lightly of the long road from Tuckborough to Buckland as he sets up his usual guest room, laughing and humming snatches of Bilbo's old traveling songs to himself. 

"I still can't seem to stop anywhere without being waylaid," he chuckles, putting his clothes neatly in the dresser. "You would think that after almost three years, everyone would start to get bored of hearing about that whole business in Bywater. But everywhere I go, it's all anyone wants to talk about! They could at least ask to hear about something else once in a while... like about Treebeard and the march on Isengard! _That_ was a much funnier story."

"True," Merry smiles, "but then some of the little ones might start getting ideas about going off on adventures to see Ents and wizards and all kinds of unsavory things, and we can't have that, Pip. Not unless we want to take up Bilbo and Gandalf's mantle as disturbers of the peace!"

Pippin laughs, bright and clear. "Oh, I have no doubt that we'll outdo the Mad Bagginses someday. Sam may have inherited Bag End, but _we_ shall inherit their reputation, I'm afraid." His face softens a little as he pulls an old shirt from his bag, one he must have packed by mistake. It's from before the quest and the Ent-draught, and doesn't fit like it used to. "We stick out like sore thumbs, really," he sighs, sitting at the foot of the bed.

Merry nods slowly, silently. He looks down at the hems of his own trousers, which still fall just a little too high above his ankles, even after all the adjustments he's made to them. His gaze drifts to the guest bed, the one that Pippin has stayed in since he was big enough to leave the cradle. Now, he thinks, if Pippin was to lie flat, little bits of him would stick out from the edges.

When he looks back at Pippin, he catches the younger hobbit staring, with a look in his eyes that Merry has never seen before. But the moment passes; Pippin's eyes clear, and he smiles again as he tosses his bag into the corner unceremoniously. "Oh, to hell with the unpacking," he huffs. He flops down on the bed the wrong way round, his legs and head dangling. "I'm too tired to even think, Merry."

"I take it that means _get lost,_ " Merry laughs. "Well, I wasn't going to keep you up much longer, anyway. Get some rest, Pip."

"You, too, Merry."

Merry pauses on his way out the door, and when he glances back, he sees Pippin looking up at the ceiling with that strange look in his eyes again, and an anxious twist to his mouth.

"...I'm glad you came," Merry says, and Pippin looks up in surprise. "I know I'm a bit... well, you know. But it's good to see you."

A shadow lifts from Pippin's face, one that Merry didn't even notice until now that it's gone. He sits up in bed, looking hesitant. "Merry, I..."

But like cool water through his fingers, the moment slips away. Pippin lets out a breath, smiling a little sadly. "It's good to see you, too."

There was a time when Merry and Pippin were inseparable, like a puzzle of just two pieces. They fit into one another, if nothing else. But, Merry thinks as he walks back to his room, they both were one and whole back then. Since those days, they've been shattered to pieces and had to rebuild themselves more times than either of them could count. The puzzle grows more complex and difficult each time, and Merry isn't certain that neither of them have left pieces of themselves behind somewhere along the way.

A chill wind blows through an open window in the hall, and Merry clutches his right arm with a shiver. He suddenly wishes that he could pick and choose which pieces of himself to leave behind.

* * *

For several days, Pippin enjoys his stay at Brandy Hall. He spends much of his time at home, and listens to more stories than he tells. Now fully grown, he takes his turn at last to watch the children at the Hall, and they pay back all his own childhood mischiefs tenfold. And once the little ones are put to bed, he spends long evenings talking with his older relatives as they reflect on the end of the Third Age. The flickering glow of the hearth casts Pippin's careworn face into sharp relief, and some nights Merry thinks that Pippin hardly looks any younger than the old gaffers and gammers sitting beside him— a small figure huddled in the dark, bent by something other than time.

But most of all, Pippin spends his days with Merry. They take long walks through Buckland, wandering aimlessly for the most part, and stopping wherever they can find a quiet place to sit and talk. They talk about everything and nothing at all; trading family gossip under the trees in Crickhollow, discussing news from Hobbiton in the heather south of the Hall. 

"Sam and Rosie will be throwing a birthday party for Elanor soon," Pippin tells him one day. "Can you believe it? A year old already..."

"A year!" Merry cries. "It seems like just yesterday that she was born! I can still remember Sam bawling his eyes out when she smiled at him for the first time."

"And I can remember _you_ crying the first time you made her laugh," Pippin smiles. "Though I'm sure your silly crying face was even funnier to her."

"Heh, probably." Merry looks off into the distance, west toward the river. "Let's see, she was born on the 25th... Goodness, that's barely two weeks away. And she was only eight months old the last time I saw her! Time flies, doesn't it?"

"It does," Pippin agrees, but he seems to be thinking about something else as he examines Merry's face. After a moment, he looks away, apparently unable to find what he's looking for.

Another day, they come all the way to the edge of the Old Forest, peering up at the overhang reaching past the High Hay. The trees seem smaller now, somehow, and their malice very sad and empty. When they began to creep closer to the hedge again, Merry and Pippin strongly opposed the felling or burning of any more trees. And though now the Old Forest seems to grow closer and bolder by the day, all the two little hobbits can find in their hearts is pity. They still remember Quickbeam's lament, how his own voice broke as he mourned the voices of the trees who had been silenced forever and a day. Merry and Pippin often wonder what kind of mourning songs the trees of the Old Forest would sing if they could remember their own voices. 

"Perhaps they would be friendlier to us now," Pippin jokes, "since we're friends of Treebeard."

"Maybe," Merry smiles. "But I suspect that being friends of Treebeard won't make up for making an enemy of Old Man Willow."

"No, I guess not... Still," Pippin sighs, sitting down against the hedge, "I should like to go back sometime to visit old Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. How strange to think that they're just a few days' journey away!"

"It may as well be a year's journey," Merry says softly, "for how far away it all feels. And yet I think about going to see them, too. Perhaps going even further than that. I suppose Bilbo was right about the road beginning right at one's door."

"What do you mean?" Pippin asks slowly, eyeing his cousin closely. But Merry seems distracted, staring up at the gnarled and sagging boughs trying in vain to stretch past the High Hay and into his own world. A part of him wishes that he could reach out and touch them, but he's still far too small, in spite of everything.

The one place that Merry and Pippin don't walk is by the river. As a child, like most hobbits, Pippin was afraid of the water. Perhaps just out of habit, Merry always takes him walking far away from the Brandywine. But to Merry's surprise, toward the end of his visit, Pippin brings up the subject himself.

“I think I’d like to go out on the river today," he says casually, over breakfast. "Would you want to come with me?”

Merry raises an eyebrow. “Since when do _you_ like boating?”

Pippin shrugs. “Oh, you know… Broadening my horizons, never too late to try, all that fluff. And anyway, it would be pretty silly for me to still be afraid of boats after all the time we spent on the Anduin.”

“Well, you should always be a _little_ afraid,” Merry warns. “It’s never a good idea to underestimate the river.”

“Hm, that’s probably true.” Pippin links an arm with Merry’s, smiling gently. “But it’s never a good idea to underestimate us, either.”

And so that afternoon, after a picnic lunch on the river bank, the two young hobbits set out on the Brandywine in one of the canoes from the Hall— a boat that looks like it could be even more ancient than old Grandfather Rory. 

“You’re sure this thing won’t fall apart on us?” Pippin asks uneasily, setting a hesitant foot inside.

“It’s precisely because she won’t fall apart that she's lasted this long, Pip.” Merry flashes a wink as he pushes off the bank and hops easily inside. “Don't worry, I've been using this old girl since Frodo used to take me out on the water as a lad. And it’s a little late for second thoughts, you know.”

“Never said I was having second thoughts,” Pippin sniffs. “Just making sure that you’re having thoughts of _any_ kind.”

“Oh, I never am. You should know that by now, cousin!”

Pippin smiles, but his eyes are searching as he looks at Merry. There’s worry at the corners of them. “Well, I wonder about that.”

For a while, they are content to drift down the river southwards and watch the scenery go slowly by. They talk a little, lightly and brightly in their usual fashion. But for the most part, they sit in silence. The whole world seems quiet here upon the water, far from the hustle and bustle of town. Merry is content to just be away from people for a while.

Pippin, on the other hand, seems to have something on his mind. Merry catches him staring every now and then, and sometimes he hears him take a breath as if to speak, but then say nothing. 

“...Well, Pip?” Merry finally says after a while, forcing a smile as he trails his fingers in the boat’s wake. “Cat got your tongue, or what? Whatever it is, let’s hear it. You’re somehow noisier when you don’t talk”

Pippin watches the little wakes of Merry’s fingertips. “...That goes for you as well,” he says slowly. “I was just thinking that you aren’t talking much.”

“Well, _one_ of us has to be paying attention to the river, Pip.”

“I don’t mean just today.”

Merry has no answer to that— none of his usual lighthearted brush-offs, anyway. It’s true enough that he’s kept mostly to himself for the past few weeks, and that he hasn’t been to Bag End or the Great Smials for a while. 

“...I’m talking to you now, aren’t I?” he says, but it’s halfhearted.

“You are,” Pippin admits. “But… you’re not really saying anything, if you understand what I mean.”

_Good old Pippin,_ Merry thinks drily. _Can’t hide anything from you, these days._ But his face softens just a little at the sight of Pippin’s fidgeting hands in his lap and the faint crease in his brow. “I do,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Pippin.”

“No, you don’t have to…” Pippin lets out a breath, watching Bucklebury Ferry grow closer on the banks. “I mean, I understand. I think I do, anyway. But…”

Merry glances at the ferry as they pass it by. A part of him thinks he can see just the faintest shadow of a cloaked rider in the distance coming toward them, and he feels his arm go cold and stiff. A shiver passes through him, and he pulls his hand quickly from the water.

Pippin must see it, too, in his own way. He goes just a little paler, looks a little older, as they pass through the ferry and away from the imagined danger. But when he looks back at Merry, all the older hobbit sees is a kind of sadness.

“It may be selfish, but I wish you would talk to me, Merry.” He reaches out and takes Merry’s right hand— his cold hand— and squeezes it. “I know there are many things I won’t be able to understand, but… I should like to try, if you would let me. I know I'm a terrible ass, but I... I do love you so, Merry. I don’t want to lose you.”

Pippin’s grip is strong and warm. Merry can feel the warmth spreading up his arm and to his very heart. A lump rises in his throat as his own grip on Pippin tightens, as if he was clutching a lifeline. 

_You won’t,_ Merry wants to say. But he’s afraid that he may have already lost himself a long time ago.

For a while, they just sit like that in silence. What can Merry even say, he wonders? That even after three years— three years ago _today_ — Merry still feels the world go dark and cold at times? That he hasn't smoked a pipe in weeks because it takes him right back to that terrible day, and Théoden's last words and his weakly clutching hand? That he's ashamed that he hasn't visited Bag End in four months just because it's so hard to see Sam and Rosie and little Elanor, and an empty chair in Frodo's place? That when he's around people, he desperately wishes to be alone, and when he's alone, he feels thin and empty enough to simply fade away? He will never, _never_ admit that he's angry that unlike Sam, his time won't ever come. He won't be allowed to pass over the sea, as if everything that he went through somehow meant less. As if his _love_ meant less. And so he must try to squeeze himself back into his old life, like a pair of ill-fitting trousers, and keep all these nasty, inconvenient thoughts to himself where they can't hurt anyone else but him.

It's true, what Pippin said. There are too many things that he'll never understand.

“...It’s hard,” Merry finally says instead, voice thick, and clears his throat. “It’s hard to tell you what even I don’t understand, Pip. And yet, it’s hard to talk about anything else, either.”

Pippin nods, eyes soft and dim. “I see…” He keeps on holding tight to Merry’s hand as they drift further and further down the river, two very small figures letting the wide and silent world pass them by.

“And it’s hard,” Merry continues, as if a crack was shooting through the dam, “to try to just go back to how things were before. When the truth is, we can’t go back. None of us can. And yet everyone else seems to be so much better at pretending than I am.”

“They were spared a lot of the blows that we took, dear Merry,” Pippin says gently. “Things have not changed so much for them as they have for us.”

“That’s unfair,” Merry whispers.

“…I know.” 

Merry blinks back tears at the sound of Pippin’s voice. It is not the same voice of the scrawny tween who left the Shire with him. Something in it breaks Merry’s heart open, and he begins to cry.

And so for a while, they sit in the boat much the same way that they sat in the streets of Minas Tirith that day not so long ago— Merry with his head in Pippin’s lap, crying and shivering, and Pippin’s hand trailing gently through Merry’s brown curls, blinking back tears of his own. Back then, they were waiting for rescue. These days, neither of them are sure what they’re waiting for anymore.

But just like that day, Merry can feel a little of the fog lifting from his eyes, lying there in Pippin’s lap.

"I miss him," he finally admits, his voice a pained whisper. "It hurts."

"...I miss him, too," Pippin says softly. He sniffles, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. "But you knew him longer than any of us. I'm sorry, Merry." He wishes that he had anything more meaningful to say, but all his words feel so clumsy and brittle compared to Merry's grief.

But Merry closes his eyes, tears slipping down his cheek. Just to say it and be heard is already a terrible weight off his shoulders.

After a while, reluctantly, Pippin draws his hand away to grab his paddle. “We’ve drifted far,” he admits. “I’ll get us back home.”

“You mean, _we,_ ” Merry murmurs, sitting up and wiping his eyes. “Hand me the other paddle.”

“I can do it,” Pippin protests.

“Pip, you barely even know how to _hold_ a paddle. And this is a tandem canoe, anyway. It’s made for two.”

Pippin eyes him hesitantly, but Merry’s face softens. “I’m feeling better,” he assures Pippin. “You don’t have to do it all yourself, Pip.”

_I wish that I could,_ Pippin thinks suddenly, a lump rising in his throat as he glances at the scar on Merry's forehead. _I wish that I was bigger and stronger and had thicker skin. I wish I was there when you needed me most. I wish I could have protected you, and the others, too._

But he hands Merry the paddle, and against the two of them, the river’s gentle current is nothing but a whisper along the sides of the boat. In what feels like no time at all, they come back to where they started. After pulling the boat ashore, they sit at the bank for a while, letting the water wash over their feet. In Lothlórien, the River Nimrodel seemed to wash away all their pain and grief. Here by the Brandywine, they can feel it being worn smooth like the stones in the riverbed, little by little.

“...You asked if I was going to bury you,” Pippin whispers, drawing his knees up to his chest. “When I found you that day in Minas Tirith. I thought I would never be as afraid as I was during that battle, but when you said that, I was more afraid than I even was of dying. And I’m still afraid, Merry.”

Merry puts his hands in the cool water. It rushes past so quickly, and yet he knows that it cannot sweep him away.

“I’m afraid, too,” he says quietly. “I’m afraid I’ve lost something I cannot get back, no matter how hard I try.” 

Pippin lays his head on Merry’s shoulder, crying silently. In the river's song, Merry can hear an echo of the sea. It seems to call to him; the place where all roads and rivers lead. But like a wave on the shore, the moment comes and goes. He feels the grass beneath him, and Pippin's warmth beside him.

“...But I know that I don’t want to just fade away,” Merry finally says. “I feel like a stranger to myself sometimes, but that stranger is alive. I _want_ him to live. I want to know him better, and love him for the knowing.” He rests his head on top of Pippin’s. “And I hope that you all will love him, too, once you get to know him.”

Pippin sniffles. “You really _are_ an ass if you think that we wouldn’t.”

“Heh, I suppose I am. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed.”

The walk home is silent as they haul the canoe back to the boathouse, each deep in their own thoughts. The sun sinks down behind the hills across the river, warming their backs with the last light of day. On the other side of the sea, Merry thinks as he glances back, it must be rising. 

"I'm sure he misses us, too."

Startled, Merry looks back to Pippin. The younger hobbit looks awkward and sheepish, fingers tapping against the side of the boat as he speaks. "I mean, he loves us. I believe that, anyway. So he must miss us, and think of us. That thought makes me... makes me feel a little closer to him."

Merry's face softens as the sun finally sinks below the horizon with one last flash of red and gold. "...I'm sure you're right," he smiles. 

It isn't long before they make it back to the boathouse, and with Merry's expert instruction, they soon have the canoe clean and stored safely. The walk to the Hall passes much more easily, with laughter and song, and by the time they arrive, they feel changed. As if just one crooked piece of the puzzle finally was slotted into place.

"I'm knackered," Pippin yawns, immediately turning toward the bedrooms as soon as they get home. "Boating is a lot more exhausting than I remembered!"

Merry laughs at that, a genuine snorting laugh. "Well, hopefully we'll get the hang of it at some point."

"I think we will," Pippin smiles. "Good night, Merry."

"Night, Pip."

Merry turns toward his own bedroom, just as exhausted as Pippin, but suddenly stops.

"Pippin?"

"Hm?"

"I missed you."

In the dim firelight of the Hall, Merry sees Pippin's eyes widen. He thinks perhaps he even sees them glisten a little in the glow. "...I missed you, too, Merry," he says quietly.

* * *

When the last day of Pippin's visit finally comes around, Merry goes alone to see him off. He walks Pippin to Bucklebury Ferry, but when they arrive, they find no shadows waiting for them.

Pippin takes a deep breath as he loads his baggage onto the ferry. "Well," he says.

"Well," Merry agrees.

"You'll come to Elanor's birthday, won't you?"

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Then I'll see you very soon," Pippin smiles. "And don't forget, it'll be your turn to visit me at Great Smials next!"

"Hm, well... _that_ I'll have to think about."

Pippin smacks him in the arm, and Merry bites back a grin. "All right, you ass," Pippin laughs, "then I'll just have to spirit you away after Elanor's party. At least as far as Bywater and the _Green Dragon._ "

"Now _there's_ an idea. It's been ages since I passed through Bywater..."

"Well, then they'll be all the more glad to see you." Pippin glances back at the ferry, loaded up and waiting for him. Then he looks back hesitantly at Merry. Before Merry has a chance to ask what's on his mind, Pippin suddenly opens his arms wide.

Merry's face softens. "Oh, Pip," he murmurs, and he opens his arms, too. Pippin immediately wraps Merry up tight, burying his face in his shoulder. After a moment, Merry returns the embrace, though far more gently.

"If ever you need me," Pippin says, voice muffled, "just say the word and I'll come running. I mean it, Merry."

Merry's vision swims as he hugs Pippin a little tighter. "I know you do. I believe you."

"And you're always welcome back home in Tuckborough. Even if you just need a quiet place to think."

Merry smiles, laying his head against Pippin's shoulder. "You Tooks are never quiet, and you hardly think."

"And you Brandybucks can never just let a hobbit try to be sincere!" Pippin laughs. He lets go of Merry, slowly and reluctantly, and boards the ferry. "...Well," he says again softly, pushing off, "I'll be seeing you, Merry."

"Take care, Pip," Merry says quietly.

And just like the day that Frodo left Buckland, Merry watches the ferry slowly make its way across the river, growing smaller and smaller until he can no longer make out Pippin's face in the distance. A loneliness begins to creep upon him, cold and prickly in his core. When he sees the ferry reach the dock on the other side, Merry turns back toward home.

"MERRY!"

Pippin's bright, clear voice carries itself right over the divide between them, louder than the song of the river or the sea. Merry turns to see him waving goodbye, his big, silly hat in his hand.

"DON'T MISS ME TOO MUCH!" Pippin hollers.

A grin spreads across Merry's face, warmer and more genuine a smile than he's worn in years. "I CAN'T MISS YOU IF YOU DON'T GET LOST!" he yells.

He hears an echo of Pippin's laughter on the wind, and suddenly Merry feels that the Brandywine is much smaller than it was when he was seven. Or perhaps he's simply grown bigger. Yes, that's it. A warmth fills him as he waves back to Pippin on the other shore. For the first time in a long time, he feels big.

**Author's Note:**

> Been having... a rough time lately. But I reread the Houses of Healing chapter recently and cried a lot over Merry getting literally lost in his grief. I've been feeling pretty lost, too. But I'm lucky to have some good friends who've been holding my hand through everything and keeping the fog at bay. So I wrote this for myself, but also for them. <3
> 
> Thanks as always for reading, I hope you guys enjoyed, and comments and kudos are appreciated more than words can say <3 Stay warm everyone!!


End file.
